Rock Hill

Rock Hill is the largest city in York County, South Carolina and the fifth-largest city in the state. It is also the fourth-largest city of the Charlotte metropolitan area, behind Charlotte, Concord, and Gastonia (all located in North Carolina, unlike Rock Hill). The population was 66,154 as of the 2010 Census.Rock Hill is located approximately 25mi south of Charlotte and approximately 70mi north of Columbia.HistoryPre-colonizationSucceeding cultures of indigenous peoples lived in the Piedmont for thousands of years. The historic Catawba Indian Nation, a traditionally Siouan-speaking tribe, was here at the time of European encounter. Currently the only tribe in South Carolina that is federally recognized, its members live near Rock Hill.Early colonizationAlthough some European settlers had already arrived in the Rock Hill area in the 1830s and 1840s, Rock Hill did not really start to become an actual town until the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad Company made the decision to send a rail line through the area. Originally, the railroad had hoped to build a station in the nearby village of Ebenezerville which was squarely between Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina. When approached, however, the locals in Ebenezerville refused to have the railroad run through their village since they considered it dirty and noisy. Instead, engineers and surveyors decided to run the line two miles away by a local landmark." According to some accounts, the engineers marked the spot on the map and named it "rocky hill."